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From music videos for artists including The Streets and The Chemical Brothers to Chanel campaigns and an advert with Madonna, Alice Felton is the woman who knows how to bring creative worlds visually to life.

The set decorator for Hamnet, the Shakespeare story adapted from the book by Maggie O’Farrell and directed by Chloe Zhao, she is now one of the British nominees up for an Oscar this weekend.

This is her second nomination in the production design category, having previously been shortlisted for her work on The Favourite – for which British star Olivia Colman was named best actress, and Felton won the BAFTA award, alongside collaborator Fiona Crombie.

Now, she is getting ready for her second Oscars in LA.

Speaking to Sky News ahead of the show, she said she was working in Prague in below-freezing temperatures, and eating out at a restaurant, when she found out she had been nominated.

‘I secretly hid my phone…’

“I secretly hid my phone under my plate with my ear pod and I was like, oh I just need to listen to something… and then suddenly I knocked all my stuff over… It was very exciting, very happy.”

Felton started in the industry with work experience on music videos and commercials, after studying theatre and art and wanting to combine those skills with her love of film.

“I started working on pop videos and commercials at a time [when] lots of money was spent on amazing, big-budget productions for pop videos,” she says. “So the time of MTV. It was an amazing training ground… I painted sets, bought props, anything that was needed.”

The Streets’ video for Don’t Mug Yourself is one you instantly remember for the visuals; Mike Skinner sitting in the typical greasy spoon, the two plates of full English and “plenty of scrambled eggs and plenty of fried tomato”. Felton also assisted on Robbie Williams’s memorable ice-skating video for She’s The One.

“It’s so iconic all this imagery and I was just starting out,” she says. She then moved on to television shows, including Murphy’s Law and Silent Witness, before getting the chance to assist the set decorator on Martin Scorsese’s Hugo – “probably my doorway into larger films”.

‘You have to think about how people lived’

On Hamnet, she worked once again with Crombie, who is from Australia. In her role as set decorator she says she will usually get involved about three months before filming starts.

“We’re involved in what everyone eats, all the flowers, all the lighting and everything that surrounds that person [being filmed],” she says. Everything surrounding the characters that isn’t a wall, or structural, basically.

Researching for the project, she says she had to “dig into each space” you see on screen. “Like the glove-making workshop or the Globe (theatre) and think about how people lived.”

Felton highlights working on the set for The Favourite, “because we just had such a fun, creative time”, and sci-fi comedy Mickey 17, starring Robert Pattinson and directed by Bong Joon Ho, among her favourite experiences. “I’m really proud of that film and working with director Bong because he was so involved in the work and a real auteur.”

Dancing to Rihanna ‘helped crew affected by Hamnet’

Hamnet, which stars Paul Mescal as Shakespeare and Oscar favourite Jessie Buckley as his wife, Agnes, was also “really up there”.

“I loved Maggie O’Farrell’s book already,” she says. “I love Chloe Zhao… working on Hamnet was hugely female-centred, really female-driven. It felt like a very nurturing environment.”

Felton mentions a video shared by Zhao, of the cast dancing on set to Rihanna’s 2011 hit, We Found Love, and how the filmmaker created a positive environment when dealing with filming the death of a child and a mother’s grief.

“That would happen weekly for the crew,” she says. “A lot of the crew were really deeply affected by what was happening, it was a lot to watch and take on. And the fact they all got to dance in the set, they’d do Thriller or the conga… especially children, their memory of that would be dancing in the set instead of something negative.”

Now, she has the Oscars to look forward to. Hamnet has eight nominations in total, including hers and Buckley’s.

“I’m just so happy for Jessie,” she says. “We watched her throughout filming give her heart and soul… the Oscars are amazing, but it’s also amazing to have created a piece of art that is making people happy.”